48 hours with no head injuries...

And he's as excited about it as we are!

One more time, don't stop the dancing!

Tonight the little dude (our, ahem, daft punk), his dad, and his Pops were having a great time laughing and playing before bed. 

Then the little guy fell and smacked his head on the side of his crib.  His bruise from the other day has barely faded, and now he has this one on the other side. 

As much as he loves playing with his dad and Pops, he prefers to snuggle with me when he gets hurt.  Once we cuddle and I love on him a bit, he cheers right up and cruises off to hit his head on something else pointy.

Are they like boy-scout badges?

Some friends of ours say that the badge of early-parenthood is drool on one shoulder. We both usually have drool (if not food stains) on at least one shoulder, so it's clearly true.

Tonight, the little dude busted his lip pushing a crate around the kitchen. I wasn't paying attention, so I don't know exactly what happened. But see the puffiness on the top right side of his lip?

He's fine- he calmed and ate a whole piece of cheese toast and an entire banana.  My shirt, on the other hand, has seen better days. 

 Maybe blood on your shoulder can be the badge of Xtreme-parenthood.

A new line of work?

A while ago, when the boy had just began crawling, I thought he might become a mechanic. Remember? Well, it looks like he may be training for a new line of work.


Picture him crashing through a window in a action packed scene. Am I right? He really enjoys when I throw him around. He has no fear. That'll change soon I'm sure (hopefully).

Is that like a lovey?

When he fusses during a diaper change, sometimes it helps to let him gnaw on something of his choosing from the pile of junk on the side of his changing table. His first choice is the snot-sucker, but I try my best to keep that out of his mouth.  He'll usually settle for the thermometer cover, but tonight he wanted to chew on the diaper rash cream tube.  I took him downstairs to take a picture of his cute pajamas, but he wouldn't put down the stupid diaper rash cream.

That is, he didn't put it down until he thought he had a shot at gnawing on the camera.

What a goober.

Life is like a solo food fight...

... at least for this one.  He managed to get sweet potato fries in his hair during dinner.  He needed a bath anyway, but really? in his hair?  Wow.

Plus, look at all that grease!  I thought these fries weren't that greasy, especially since we bake them... but he had a lot of grease in his hair.  Maybe it's time to find a recipe instead of just "cooking" the frozen ones.

What a mean dad!

There is a spectrum, particularly in middle school, that goes from merciless bully on one end all the way to mercilessly bullied on the other.  When I was in middle school, I was closer to the bullied end of the spectrum.  My guess is that my darling husband was closer to the bully end, because of this:

Yup, he put a 'KICK ME!' sign on our son's back. Please ignore the fact that the little guy was about to be shirtless at the dinner table and focus on the post-it note stuck to his tender little baby skin. Why would anyone do that to a ten-month-old? 

A tad high-strung? Me?

While we were getting ready for church this morning, the little dude face-planted into the bathroom vanity.  He fussed a little so I comforted him and finished brushing my teeth.  Then I took him to get a diaper change, and OH MY GOSH there was a GIANT goose-egg rapidly expanding on his forehead.  And it had a scratch across it.

I hollered for his dad, and asked if he thought that we should take the little guy to the emergency room because this was clearly terrible head-trauma.  He scoffed at me.  We agreed that if the little guy died due to head injuries today, it would totally be his fault.  Then I promptly bumped the little guy's head on the wall by accident.  (Oops.)  According to his dad, that negated our previous assignment of responsibility.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.  The little guy is fine, but here is a picture of the giant, possibly-life-threatening bruise.  I had to circle it in paint because it wasn't showing up very well on camera, but trust me, it is enormous.

Daddy's little helper, Part 3

We did some housework today, and the little guy was fascinated by the vacuum cleaner.  He just watched it and followed it the whole time his daddy was cleaning.  He even stopped chewing to look!  If it can distract the boy from his food, you know he thinks it's exciting.

Watching some football, chillin' like a villain

We were watching two football games (FSU and Tennessee played at the same time!) during his dinner-time today (hooray for picture-in-picture), so he got to eat his cheese-toast on the couch.

He was cracking me up-- all slouched over and leaning on the remotes.  Just give the kid some potato chips and a beer and he'll look like any other college football fan.

It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log!

The poor little guy woke up extra early this morning, so he was tired, hungry, and cutting a tooth at dinnertime. He cheered up once he got a little food in his belly.

He shoves a ton of food in his mouth when he eats, and he usually has a chunk of food hanging out of his mouth while he chews.  His dad and I were making fun of the way he eats, and I took this terrible picture of the three of us with bread hanging out of our mouths.

That's what a wild Friday night at our house looks like!

Where's the baby? No, seriously, where is he?

He just crawls quietly out of whatever room we're all in.  We're having to make an concerted effort to watch him closely-- otherwise he'll disappear. He still can't really go up the stairs, so he can only disappear in a limited area, but still... stressful.  This weekend he wandered off while I was folding laundry and watching football.  I found him two rooms and around a corner from where I was.

Anyway, tonight he played with the cardboard recycling instead of the plastic and aluminum recycling. 

It's a real walk on the wild side at our house. 

Just for the taste of it...

... Diet Coke!  (It's empty.  We're not going to give him coffee or diet coke until kindergarten.)

Speaking of furniture*, every time I sit on the floor to take his picture he crawls right over, leading to a lot of this type of thing:

What a silly little dude.

*One of my friends and I used to say "Speaking of furniture" as a segue whenever we wanted to change the subject during a conversation.  One day somebody we were talking to actually did want to talk about furniture and got excited.  It was random but hilarious.  (I told that story badly-- I promise it's supposed to be really funny.)

Are you ready for some football?

My Seminoles weren't ready to play their game (I don't really want to talk about it), but the little guy was ready to watch it.

He's getting pretty handy with the remote control, too. 

Please ignore the clutter... I was halfway through rearranging some furniture when the game started.  The little dude managed to zoom in using the cable remote, leading to my inability to see the score at the bottom of the screen for almost the whole second quarter while I tried to figure out what he did. Of course, not seeing the score might have been an improvement on my viewing experience, so maybe he was trying to help? *sigh*

It goes so fast...

This week I realized that his first birthday will be listed on next month's baby-room newsletter (sob).  It seems like yesterday that he was only six weeks old.

He's able to stand on his own for more than just a moment, and I can tell that he wants to walk.  He's outgrowing his nine-month clothes and fitting into twelve-month sizes. His new pajamas came from the toddler section of the store. (The new sizes have a lot fewer "Mommy's cuddly little angel" t-shirts and a lot more spiderman.)  I just want to know who took away my teeny little baby and gave me this almost-toddling boy?

Everything in moderation?

Not to get all philosophical or anything, but I think it's only natural to want your kid to be awesome at everything.  Here is something our little guy is not awesome at: moderation.  He got the container of cheddar bunnies (like goldfish, but healthier!) I had for him today, and this is what he did.

Keep in mind that this was only two hours after eating almost an entire cheese quesadilla at lunch.

Plumb tuckered out

He fell asleep in the car on the way home from daycare, and he's still asleep over an hour later. 

I know they say to never wake a sleeping baby, but I might get him up so that he'll go back to sleep tonight. His bedtime is only one hour away!

Uh-oh!

This past weekend, the little dude started saying "Uh-oh!" all the time.  He's also started saying "Mama."  Granted, he's only said that to his activity center and the dogs, but he's close.  At least the dogs are animate.  Progress, right? 

I decided to record him saying either "Uh-oh!" or "Mama" yesterday and write a cute post about how undeniably amazing he is.  Well, he didn't sleep too well Monday night and he barely napped at daycare on Tuesday, so he was a complete zombie/punk all evening and went to bed at seven.  This is the best I could get:

Tonight I took fourteen separate videos, but I finally got this:

Totally not worth it, right?  We now have eighteen different twenty-second clips of a silent baby with me saying "Uh-oh!" or "Mmmm-Mama" over and over again in the background.  I need a better hobby.

Dance Party, Take 2

The little guy ate his dinner earlier than we did tonight, so he played in the vicinity of the dining room table while we ate.  One of the funniest things he does is dance to this one particular song on his activity center.  The activity center is close to the dining room table, and we were finally able to film him rocking out to his favorite song.
 
Did you see how he starts dancing too early twice?  That's our favorite-- the look on his face when the music doesn't start is hilarious.

MacGyver has nothing on me!

The little guy was crawling around this morning and he kept slipping on the tile floor because of his footed pajamas.  Instead of taking him all the way upstairs and changing his clothes, I unsnapped the legs and tied them in a knot behind his back.  Brilliant!

(Not his Sprite, by the way.)

In case that wasn't exciting enough for you, here's a video of him enjoying a piggyback ride.

Happy Labor Day!

We had some friends come into town for the holiday weekend.  We went to a local festival on Saturday.  I completely forgot to take pictures while we were there, but here's the little guy in the car on the way home.  His face was covered in baked bean residue, and he always sleeps with his blanket in his mouth.

He shared my lunch-- fried catfish, baked beans, and hushpuppies.  He loved it!  That's my southern boy.

Dance party (or complete inappropriateness)

We were listening to '8 Mile: more music from and inspired by' tonight during dinner (fantastic parenting!).  It was a change from 'Billie Holiday: Holiday for Lovers'**  The little dude likes to dance, and he was enjoying the beat.  Here's a snippet.  He wouldn't ham it up for the camera, so this is the best I could get.

** Ok, so I bought this embarrassingly-titled cd 'Holiday for Lovers' because I misread the title as 'Holidays for Lovers.' I was expecting romantic Christmas music.  I had David Sedaris' elf story in my head, and was looking forward to a strange, but intriguing cd.  Plus, I like Billie Holiday.  Boy was I confused when I put it on and found lots of romance and no Christmas.  It's one of my favorite cds, but what a huge initial disappointment.

Hop on Pop?

The little guy's Pops was here the other night (he comes up every other week- it's really nice).  Pops decided to take his picture with the little booger.  The little one is dangerous around a camera: